Monday, May 12, 2014

I designed this board for fun after the Digispark and, subsequentally, the Adafruit Trinket were announced. The motivation was to have my own ATtiny85 based development board based on a USB bootloader and optimized for the ubiquitous 170 point mini-breadboards. In contrast to the Digispark it even sports a reset button. However, it lacks an integrated voltage converter as it is supposed to be powered by USB... -Tim

Using Micronucleus bootloader to have the Attiny85 handle the USB interface, Tim is able to keep this board super tiny. It is quite an impressive uC board layout that would work great for any USB powered project that just needs a little bit of logic and doesn't take up a lot of space. For more details, be sure to check out the rest of Tim's article. If you want to take a stab at your own tiny dev board, many of the Nanite 85 resources can be found on GitHub, including Eagle Files and code.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Biology lab freezers at the College of the Holy Cross send email alerts when their temperatures drift out of acceptable range. Students on the Worcester, Mass., campus soon will be able to use their smartphones to check whether washers are free in their dormitory laundry room. It's just one of many campuses where apps based on the Internet of Things (IoT) — the burgeoning array of Internet-connected devices — are moving beyond their established role in facilities management and into classrooms, laboratories and student life.

"You are old enough to know how very important to your future life will be the manner in which you employ your present time. I hope, therefore, you will never waste a moment of it." -Thomas Jefferson

Time is never more precious then in those years spent preparing yourself for the rest of your life. When you can move time spent waiting into time spent doing you can massively increase what you are able to achieve. That is why uses like these colleges are getting from Internet Of Things is such a fantastic step forward in future of integrated technologies.

What data would give you more time if you could have access it from anywhere?